Product Owner, Salesforce

UMGC is seeking a Salesforce Product Owner to partner with the Salesforce Principal Product Owner and CRM leadership in driving enterprise Salesforce strategy, roadmap execution, and value delivery across a complex, multi-org environment. With more than 1,500 Salesforce users across multiple departments and applications, this position plays a critical role in scaling product ownership, accelerating roadmap development, and ensuring Salesforce investments deliver measurable outcomes.

The Salesforce Product Owner bridges strategy, architecture, and delivery, translating institutional priorities, modernization goals, and ROI considerations into actionable roadmaps and prioritized backlogs. This role works closely with CRM architects and other UMGC IT platform teams to ensure solutions are well-designed, integrated, and aligned to broader enterprise needs. The Product Owner supports both legacy Salesforce capabilities and the planned evolution toward Education Cloud and future Salesforce innovations, without being narrowly tied to any single product or implementation.

Duties and Responsibilities

Product Strategy & Roadmap Execution

• Partner with the Salesforce Principal Product Owner to define and execute Salesforce roadmap slices across legacy platforms and future-state solutions, including Education Cloud.

• Contribute to multi-year Salesforce modernization planning, balancing near-term delivery with long-term transformation.

• Collaborate closely with CRM architects to ensure roadmap decisions are technically sound, scalable, and aligned to enterprise architecture standards.

• Identify opportunities to improve platform scalability, reduce operational risk, and maximize return on Salesforce investment.

Stakeholder Engagement & Advisory

• Serve as a CRM product engagement lead for business stakeholders across multiple departments.

• Establish close working relationships with other UMGC IT platform teams (e.g., integrations, student experience, data, analytics, identity, marketing, contact center) to ensure alignment across systems and initiatives.

• Advise stakeholders on Salesforce best practices, platform capabilities, dependencies, and tradeoffs to guide informed decision-making.

• Represent product priorities and recommendations in governance forums, roadmap reviews, and cross-functional planning sessions, in partnership with the Principal Product Owner and CRM Architects.

Discovery, Backlog & Intake Leadership

• Lead structured discovery to understand business goals, success measures, assumptions, constraints, and cross-platform impacts.

• Own feature intake, triage, and refinement, ensuring demand is evaluated holistically across Salesforce and integrated platforms.

• Partner with CRM architects and platform teams during discovery and refinement to shape solution approaches before work enters delivery.

• Translate business needs into high-quality user stories, acceptance criteria, and supporting artifacts.

• Maintain backlog readiness across multiple workstreams and delivery teams.

Product Outcomes & Value Realization

• Act as the product authority for acceptance, ensuring delivered capabilities align to defined business objectives, success criteria, and intended outcomes.

• Partner with CRM architects and delivery teams to validate that solution approaches support business needs, platform strategy, and long-term scalability, without owning delivery execution.

• Provide product guidance and decision-making during development to clarify intent, evaluate tradeoffs, and maintain alignment to desired outcomes.

• Define and monitor post-release success measures, including adoption, efficiency gains, cost avoidance, and experience improvements, to inform future roadmap decisions.

• Use outcome data, stakeholder feedback, and platform insights to refine backlog priorities and influence ongoing innovation.

Skills

• Working knowledge of Salesforce platforms, including Service Cloud and core CRM capabilities.

• Strong understanding of product ownership practices, including roadmap development, backlog prioritization, and value-based decision-making.

• Ability to translate business needs into clear product requirements, user stories, and acceptance criteria.

• Experience partnering with architects and technical teams to evaluate solution approaches and ensure alignment with business goals and platform strategy.

• Familiarity with Agile delivery concepts and artifacts, including epics, features, user stories, acceptance criteria, and backlog health.

• Strong analytical, communication, and facilitation skills, with the ability to engage diverse stakeholder groups.

• Ability to assess outcomes using adoption metrics, efficiency measures, or qualitative feedback to inform future roadmap decisions.

Education & Experience Requirements

Education:

• Bachelor's degree in any discipline.

Experience:

• Three to five years of experience serving in a Product Owner, Sr Business Analyst, or CRM product leadership role within a Salesforce or enterprise technology environment.

• Experience should demonstrate responsibility for shaping product direction, translating business objectives into actionable roadmaps, and ensuring delivered solutions align to defined goals, outcomes, and value measures.

• Experience must reflect strong cross-functional partnership, including close collaboration with CRM architects, delivery teams, and other IT platform teams (e.g., integrations, student experience, data, marketing, contact center).

• Candidates should demonstrate the ability to evaluate initiatives holistically, understand dependencies across systems, and advocate for business-outcome-first solutions while supporting innovation and long-term platform strategy.

• Candidates must be comfortable acting as a trusted advisor to stakeholders and leadership, synthesizing complex business and technical information into clear narratives to support prioritization, decision-making, and roadmap planning.

• Experience should include defining success measures, evaluating post-release outcomes, and using insights to inform backlog prioritization and continuous improvement.

• Experience must include working in Agile or iterative delivery environments, using tools such as Azure DevOps, Jira, or Smartsheet to manage intake, backlog readiness, refinement, and acceptance.

• This role does require accountability for ensuring initiatives meet stated objectives and delivers intended value.

Certifications:

• Salesforce Certified Administrator

Preferred Requirements

Experience:

• Five to seven years of experience

• Experience in higher education or similarly complex, service-oriented organizations is strongly preferred, particularly where CRM platforms support large, diverse user populations, multiple departments, and constituent lifecycles.

• Preferred candidates will have experience owning or contributing to Salesforce product roadmaps across multiple departments or functional areas within higher education, public sector, or large enterprise environments. Experience should demonstrate success working within matrixed organizations, balancing competing priorities, and aligning stakeholders around shared outcomes.

• Experience influencing decision-making at the leadership or governance level is strongly preferred, including facilitating roadmap discussions, presenting product recommendations, and guiding prioritization based on business value, feasibility, and strategic alignment.

• Exposure to enterprise-scale Salesforce ecosystems spanning admissions, student support, marketing, contact center, or constituent engagement functions is highly desirable, particularly in environments where transparency, scalability, and service quality are critical.

Skills

• Experience working in complex, multi-org Salesforce environments supporting multiple departments or business units.

• Familiarity with Salesforce Education Cloud, Experience Cloud, and cross-cloud use cases (not required to own or administer).

• Understanding of how integrations, data platforms, and downstream systems influence CRM product design and outcomes.

• Exposure to enterprise data, analytics, or reporting concepts used to measure adoption, effectiveness, or service quality.

• Ability to operate strategically while remaining grounded in delivery realities and platform constraints.

Certifications:

• Salesforce Platform App Builder, Salesforce Service Cloud Consultant, Salesforce Education Cloud Consultant, Salesforce Data Cloud Consultant or Specialist, Additional Salesforce analytics, cloud, or architecture certifications relevant to enterprise CRM environments

All submissions should include a cover letter and resume.

The University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC) is an equal opportunity employer and complies with all applicable federal and state laws regarding nondiscrimination. UMGC is committed to a policy of equal opportunity for all persons and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, religion, ancestry, political affiliation or veteran status in employment, educational programs and activities, and admissions.

Workplace Accommodations:

The University of Maryland Global Campus Global Campus (UMGC) is committed to creating and maintaining a welcoming and inclusive working environment for people of all abilities. UMGC is dedicated to the principle that no qualified individual with a disability shall, based on disability, be excluded from participation in or be denied the benefits of the services, programs, or activities of the University, or be subjected to discrimination. For information about UMGC's Reasonable Workplace Accommodation Policy or to request an accommodation, applicants/candidates can contact Employee Accommodations via email at employee-accommodations@umgc.edu. 

Benefits Package Highlights:

• Generous Time Off: Enjoy 22 days of paid vacation, 15 days of sick leave, 3 personal days, and 16 paid holidays (17 during general election years). For part-time employees, time off rates will be prorated based on the number of hours worked.

• Comprehensive Health Coverage: Access to health care, medical with vision, dental, and prescription plans for both individuals and families, effective from the 1st of the month following your hire date.

• Insurance Options: Term Life Insurance, Accidental Death and Dismemberment Insurance, and Long-Term Disability (LTD) Insurance. Part-time employees working less than 0.5 FTE are not eligible for LTD.

• Flexible Spending Accounts: Available for medical and dependent care expenses.

• Retirement Plans: Choose between the Optional Retirement Program (ORP) or the Maryland State Retirement and Pension System (MSRPS).

• Supplemental Retirement Plans: include 401(k), 403(b), 457(b), and various Roth options. The university does not provide matching funds.

• Tuition Remission: Immediate availability for Regular Exempt Staff. Spouses and dependent children are eligible for undergraduate tuition remission after two years of service. NOTE: For part-time employees (at least 50 percent of the time), tuition remission benefits are prorated.

Hiring Range: